I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

I remember that some time near the beginning of fifth grade, I think, a new girl came to our class for a few days. She was Rumanian (as we spelled it then), and spoke no English. I knew that Rumanian was one of the Romance languages -- the surprising one -- and I offered to interpret for her and to help her out, thinking my rudimentary Italian would be of some use. I remember that it wasn't, and that she wanted to help me help her but couldn't. We got somewhere comparing notes about numbers, but that was it. Then she didn't come back.

posted by william 10:19 PM
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